The Hills Are Dead: The Last Surviving Member Of The von Trapp Family Has Passed Away

The hills have the sads with the sound of weeping today, because the real Maria von Trapp (no, not the one that Carrie Underwood smeared the memory of) is now in heaven yodeling in front of the angels with her father, mother, stepmother and brothers and sisters. Maria von Trapp, the last surviving member of the real von Trapp family, died of natural causes in her sleep at her home in Stowe, Vermont on Tuesday. She was 99.

Maria von Trapp was the second oldest daughter and third child of Captain Georg von Trapp and his first wife Agathe Whitehead von Trapp. In the late 1930s, Maria and her family got the hell out of Nazi-occupied Austria and took their singing act throughout Europe and America. Sometime in the 1940s, the von Trapp family settled in Vermont and opened up a ski lodge. Maria’s stepmom, also Maria von Trapp, wrote a book about their family’s story and that book was of course turned into a musical and movie we all know. Because hos would get confused if two characters were named Maria, Maria’s name was changed to Louisa in the musical and movie. Maria von Trapp’s half-brother Johannes von Trapp had only nice things to say about her to AP:

“She was a lovely woman who was one of the few truly good people. There wasn’t a mean or miserable bone in her body. I think everyone who knew her would agree with that.”

Later in life, Maria worked as a lay missionary in Papua, New Guinea.

And Maria never said if she agreed with her family (and anybody with fully functional eyes, ears and souls) about how animatronic wooden statue Carrie Underwood is the last person on Earth who should play Maria von Trapp.

So long, farewell (I won’t type the rest), Maria von Trapp.